10 Things That Were Seriously Wrong With Beaches in Our Day

Beach memories

Muscle, Venice, Pesmo, Malibu. All "in" locations for making the "beach scene." Just rollin' up in your "Woody," unpacking the cooler, your "boards," and "letting it all hang out."

What a peaceful, happening paradise. The beach. What can beat it? I'd say whoever had the idea of allowing people of all ages spend a day at the beach, was a genius. I wish I knew his or her name so I could give them a well-deserved shout-out.

Good fun at the early beach scene

The beach couldn't be beat

Nothing, including a day in an air conditioned mall, beats laying on your back while slowly drifting to sleep and not thinking about anyone or anything. You are on the beach, man. What else matters? A thought suddenly zooms into your head. Your parents, a "groovy couple," spent a lot of time on the beach playing bongo's, guitar and "groovin'" to the tunes of "Ramblin' Jack Elliott and Bob Dylan and looking so cool for dropping out of college.

Funny. You are following in their "footprints in the sand dunes" just like mom and pop, or as you were allowed to call them, "Jim," and "Judy." They were so cool they both wore flowers in their hair every day and when not on the beach, they were crashin' in someone's apartment in San Francisco. A shout-out to Scott McKenzie for that faded-wonder, "Are You Going to San Francisco?"

Even Scott McKenzie loved the beach

"He Men" loved to show off their muscles on the beach.

Look at these early "Beach Bunnies."

I am not that daring anymore

I would have put video's on this hub by "The Grateful Dead," and "The Doors," but this was before they come jammin' over the airways of our Top 40 "Safe FM," stations with music by Andy Williams but now both turntables were stacked with Jerry Garcia and Jim Morrison. Ahhh, the music changed, but not the beach. One thing i can state in absolute terms: The beach itself does not change. It remains consistent even with the pointless changes of society.

Now to zap you with news that will not just educate you, but make you feel foolish. Did you know that the beach we spent so much time on was a literal "death trap?" I didn't know this until Easter 2015. I was not on any beach when I learned this "bummer" fact, for Hamilton, Alabama is a rural town and has no beaches whatsoever. I am just now reaching a point of recovery about this fact that was so cleverly-disguised and kept undercover by "the man," who made money from you and I, the unthinking "swinging teen's" who loved to vacate parents, school and responsibility by hiding on the beach.

Dude, where's my Woody?

The Woody: a beach classic.

Full-view of the beach.

"What a doll!"

"Come along with me and have some fun."

"You can be my special guest."

A surfer dude.

Riding the waves.

The gang's all here.

Empty beer cans that can cause serious cuts. | Source

I struggled to organize this news into readable text, but the only title I could create was

10 Things That Were Seriously Wrong With Beaches in Our Day

THE SAND -- that we did not notice, was not real beach sand. But sand made by a secret sand factory somewhere in Sante Fe. We didn't notice this hazard due to the fact we were only interested in making-out with whatever girl who agreed to go to the beach with us. This factory-made sand was able to give us severe burns which would require medical attention. Note: A special thanks to "Kay."

POISONOUS CREATURES -- in the shallow part of the waves could have given us a lethal bite. I am not talking about stingrays as much as those short-tempered snapping turtles or water mocassins, snakes who will make the first move on innocent people as we were.

EMPTY BEER CANS -- some uncaring bums left lying in our pathways to find a place to spread our blankets could cut our bare feet or backs if we didn't see these "aluminum annoyances," and spread our "Make Love Not War" blankets on them. And that cut might have given us a dangerous infection.

HALF-EATEN -- boxes of chicken someone who didn't think wasting food was wrong and just left them in the garbage can. What if some people we knew who spent a lovely day on the beach smoking "pot" and when the munchies hit, all they could find was this bacteria-laced chicken? An easy way for these wayward souls to contract food poisoning.

HIDDEN HOLES -- in the sand that someone's kid named, "Joey," dug with his bare hands while his parents were fast asleep. But that "Joey," what an industrious tot. He took time to partially-fill the hole with sand to make it look like there was no hole there. I promise you "Joey" saw this somewhere on his television. One of us could have broken limbs and ribs if we had fallen in this gorge.

DANGEROUS WOODEN PIERS -- that were slyly saying, "Come on, hip kids. Walk on me to the water. It's cool by me." But what about those painful splinters in our bare feet? Those were far from cool. We could have accidentally-stabbed our feet with Pine splinters and then start running for a medic.

VENEMOUS INSECTS -- who loved food that was thrown into the garbage cans. Insects such as wasps, hornets and yellow jackets that just go nuts when they see a watermelon rind just laying somewhere and if you or I would be so dumb as to not check the garbage can before we deposited our empty pop bottles, we could have received a near-deadly sting and passed out.

DESERTED FISHING LINE -- some country fisherman left near the beach in the water for he was so angry at "the big one" getting away, he just left in an angry huff. This line could have easily got around our ankles while we were enjoying a nice swim and I hate to say it. We could have met with drowning.

DEAD FISH -- that have floated on top of the water to the place where we spread our blankets. Did you know that dead fish contain a number of lethal bacteria that if not checked, can give us a terrible disease or even take our lives and back then we just went on like that was a part of life. Note: 'dead fish' the term doesn't describe me when I was with a hot chick.

CONTRACTING STD'S -- yes, this is a very adult subject. But back in our "hip teen days," we were not worried about sexually-transmitted diseases. We only wanted to party and "do our own thing." I know that I did not have any STD's because I used some common sense when with a girl, but I never asked any of the girls who dated me if they had any STD's for I was afraid of them flying mad at me and hitching a ride back to their home, but not after giving me the cursing of my life.

I do not know about you, but I am very glad that "we" lived to see this day. I have always wondered what the cops did with that hand grenade we discovered that one "wild" Saturday night and thought it was a turtle.

Comments

No HTML is allowed in comments, but URLs will be hyperlinked. Comments are not for promoting your articles or other sites.

sending

AUTHOR

Kenneth Avery

3 years agofrom Hamilton, Alabama

CASE1WORKER,

You are correct. It was a matter of just going for whatever we wanted to do and plus, you are also correct again about all of the controlling and advising . . .it gets old, bro.

Come back to talk anytime.

CASE1WORKER

3 years agofrom UNITED KINGDOM

At least you were able to enjoy yourselves- ignorant of all the dangers- now life seems so controlled and everyone aware of these dangers, oh to go back to those carefree days!

AUTHOR

Kenneth Avery

3 years agofrom Hamilton, Alabama

Minnetonka Twin,

My dear friend. You do not know just how much your comment is appreciated. I thought that you all had forgotten this hub about how people didn't watch the dangers of the beach.

I appreciate you so much.

Kenneth

Linda Rogers

3 years agofrom Minnesota

Hi Kenneth-what a fun hub with great pictures from back in the day. So many great memories of being on the beach. There is something so relaxing about putting out your blanket and basking in the sun. Have a great evening my creative friend.

This website uses cookies

As a user in the EEA, your approval is needed on a few things. To provide a better website experience, hubpages.com uses cookies (and other similar technologies) and may collect, process, and share personal data. Please choose which areas of our service you consent to our doing so.

This is used to display charts and graphs on articles and the author center. (Privacy Policy)

Google AdSense Host API

This service allows you to sign up for or associate a Google AdSense account with HubPages, so that you can earn money from ads on your articles. No data is shared unless you engage with this feature. (Privacy Policy)

This is used for a registered author who enrolls in the HubPages Earnings program and requests to be paid via PayPal. No data is shared with Paypal unless you engage with this feature. (Privacy Policy)

Facebook Login

You can use this to streamline signing up for, or signing in to your Hubpages account. No data is shared with Facebook unless you engage with this feature. (Privacy Policy)

Maven

This supports the Maven widget and search functionality. (Privacy Policy)

We may use remarketing pixels from advertising networks such as Google AdWords, Bing Ads, and Facebook in order to advertise the HubPages Service to people that have visited our sites.

Conversion Tracking Pixels

We may use conversion tracking pixels from advertising networks such as Google AdWords, Bing Ads, and Facebook in order to identify when an advertisement has successfully resulted in the desired action, such as signing up for the HubPages Service or publishing an article on the HubPages Service.

Statistics

Author Google Analytics

This is used to provide traffic data and reports to the authors of articles on the HubPages Service. (Privacy Policy)

Comscore

ComScore is a media measurement and analytics company providing marketing data and analytics to enterprises, media and advertising agencies, and publishers. Non-consent will result in ComScore only processing obfuscated personal data. (Privacy Policy)

Amazon Tracking Pixel

Some articles display amazon products as part of the Amazon Affiliate program, this pixel provides traffic statistics for those products (Privacy Policy)